I mentioned in another thread recently how absolutely/positively HORRIFIC this DiC/DHS/ICE policy is ~ and I should have known that just "outing" the story would not cause a national uproar because far too many believe the DiC can do no wrong ~ but this flat-out lie reaches a new low for the DiC ~ ~ a few "live links" in the original ~ Sooz

Trump falsely blames Democrats for his own immigration agenda
05/29/18 08:00 AM—Updated 05/29/18 10:01 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, All In with Chris Hayes, 5/25/18, 8:47 PM ET, "Must watch: Chris Hayes on 'despicable' new Trump policy", accessible via the end link.]

The stories are gut-wrenching. Hundreds of immigrants, many of them legally seeking asylum, are reaching the U.S. border, only to have American officials take their young children away. In some cases, literal toddlers have been forcibly removed from the arms of their parents.

The outrage and public condemnations of these practices has left Donald Trump with a choice. He can defend his administration’s policy; he can pretend the policy doesn’t exist; or he can try to blame others for what he’s done. In this case, the Republican president has decided to look behind Door #3, as evidenced by this tweet over the holiday weekend.


Much of this is gibberish, but the part of this that matters was the president’s insistence that Democrats approved a “horrible law” that requires him to separate children from parents.

Trump is clearly lying. There is no such law. As NBC News reported the other day, there’s a 2008 law “requiring children traveling alone at the border to be released in the ‘least restrictive setting’ while their cases are processed,” but it doesn’t require Trump to separate children from their parents, and it was a bipartisan measure signed by George W. Bush.

The policies the Trump administration are imposing on these families are part of a deliberate strategy. Whether the president understands this or not, top members of his own team – including White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen – have made no secret of the fact that they’re separating these families, on purpose, in order to discourage additional immigration.

As the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell explained, “The Trump administration’s goal is to inflict pain upon these families. Cruelty is not an unfortunate, unintended consequence of White House immigration policy; it is the objective. After all, if forced separations are sufficiently agonizing, fewer families will try to come here, no matter how dangerous their home countries are. Administration members have argued as much.”

All of which raises the question of why, exactly, Trump is telling this specific lie.

Obviously, it’s an election year, and the Republican president wants to help his party by attacking its rivals. But implicit in this is an awkward acknowledgement: Trump seems to understand that his own policies are so shameful, his own agenda is so deeply at odds with our collective conscience and sense of morality, that he wants Americans to blame others for his actions.

Indeed, this represents a rare instance in which this president seemed to describe one of his own policies as “horrible.”

Trump could, of course, simply take responsibility for his approach to governing, but that would leave him on the hook for practices he apparently considers shocking. Gaslighting the public is easier than explaining why his administration is needlessly punishing these immigrants.

The question for the White House is simple: if the president is offended by his own policy in this area, and he can’t think of a defense for his own agenda, why doesn’t he stop separating children from their families?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-falsely-blames-democrats-his-own-immigration-agenda

"The question for the White House is simple: if the president is offended by his own policy in this area, and he can’t think of a defense for his own agenda, why doesn’t he stop separating children from their families?"

Because he does not really want to change it - just wants to blame someone else for it.

Karolinablue wrote:

"The question for the White House is simple: if the president is offended by his own policy in this area, and he can’t think of a defense for his own agenda, why doesn’t he stop separating children from their families?"

Because he does not really want to change it - just wants to blame someone else for it.

He and Sessions introduced this policy quite deliberately. They can also reverse it. But, like most right wingers, they take delight in causing pain and suffering to anyone who isn't rich and lily white whether it's separating children from their parents or throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans.

This enrages me ~ and it should enrage all of us ~ ~ Sooz

Rachel Maddow
US inflicting lifelong trauma on immigrant children seeking help

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, talks with Rachel Maddow about the trauma inflicted on young children of families torn apart by ICE, and the effort to reunite them with their parents. Jun.04.2018

Watch the video at: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

I cannot believe what my country has become and why more people are not outraged or horrified about what is being done in our name.

queenie, it's the "Those dirty, criminal illegals deserve this" mentality. It's racism and xenophobia at it's "finest" which was simmering just under the radar during Obama's tenure. Trump has let it loose and encouraged it with the help of the "religious right" idiots. America didn't "become" this, it always was this, but kept in check by rational, compassionate leaders along with religious leaders who preached love and tolerance, teachers who taught this in classrooms and adults who raised their children to believe in those tenets. jmo

Unless and until the people who ARE horrified by this get off their duffs and start speaking up, it won't change and possibly will grow worse. That scares me. Luckily, I have great faith in the current generation of new voters who have shown their courage and tenacity regarding the NRA and gun laws. Hopefully that will carry over into other areas of concern.

I canNOT wrap my mind around this level of flat-out deeply evil cruelty ~ ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Trump and Sessions’ border policy is a nightmare — and that was the idea all along
Trump promised to go after families of “terrorists.” Apparently he meant the ruthless persecution of all immigrants.
Heather Digby Parton / June 6, 2018 12:20pm (UTC)


Trump delivered many disturbing, un-American declarations during the 2016 campaign but that had to be one of the most chilling, immoral comments any American politician has ever made. He hasn't changed his attitude since he became president. The Washington Post reported this just last April:


He stated repeatedly on the trail that families were "in on it," that "the wives know," and so on, expressing the opinion that they had to be dealt with harshly in order to persuade the bad guys to stop their terrorist ways. He never explicitly said that the U.S. government should remove children from their families but apparently he thinks that's a good idea too. He's actually put that form of "going after the families" into practice on the Mexican border.

The issue of children from Mexico and Central America turning up at the border unaccompanied and asking for asylum has been a thorny issue for some time. Those kids' parents sent them away to escape violence in their home countries and our government has never dealt with it successfully.

Under Barack Obama they were housed in unpleasant conditions and the government apparently "lost track" of some of them, although immigrant advocates say that particular story is overblown because most of those kids simply ended up with relatives and fell off the grid. Nonetheless, at least the Obama administration understood it was dealing with a humanitarian crisis and made some effort to mitigate the problem, however ineffectually.

Something much more insidious is taking place today. On May 7, the Trump administration announced its new hardline immigration policy:


I hope I don't have to point out that it's not the child's fault either. But that doesn't appear to concern Sessions or Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen any more than killing family members to deter terrorists concerns their boss. Nielsen declared that Americans are separated from their children every day when they commit crimes -- so if you don't commit a crime, it won't happen to you. Defining keeping your family together as "smuggling" is glib, but that doesn't mean it makes sense.


These aren't members of MS-13, the violent street gang that Trump calls "animals" and loves to talk about in creepy, lurid detail. Some of these children and families, in fact, are appearing at the border seeking asylum from MS-13 in their home countries. (Many gang members are hardened into violent criminals in the American prison system and are then deported back to their home countries where they rule the streets.) Trump and Sessions don't have any compassion for those women and children, for reasons that aren't hard to figure out. They hail from "shithole countries" and in their minds aren't much better than "animals" themselves.

It is not a crime to appear at the U.S. border and seek asylum. Yet people who do that are essentially being treated exactly the same as people who have crossed the border illegally simply to seek work. Neither of these categories should be prosecuted as criminals but the former are especially vulnerable people, often women with their kids, trying to escape violence and keep their families out of the line of fire. They are allowed by law to have a fair hearing of their asylum application and they are not getting it.

According to NBC News, the system is so backlogged and overwhelmed that hundreds of kids under the age of 12 are stuck in various overcrowded detention centers and it's getting worse every day. Salon's Matthew Rosza wrote about the fact that Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., attempted to visit one of these detention centers last weekend only to be turned away. It's clear they're hiding something.

This podcast interview between MSNBC's Chris Hayes and ACLU immigration lawyer Lee Gelernt is extremely informative about the surreal nightmare of this byzantine system, which is of course a feature, not a bug. According to Gelernt, the government's Kafkaesque policy is to immediately separate mothers from their kids, some as young as a few months old, then rush the applicant through a phony hearing so their application can be denied and they can be prosecuted for illegal entry -- even though they openly presented themselves to authorities to seek asylum. And even in the unlikely event they win their cases, they don't necessarily get their kids back.

The whole point of this is to make examples of these mothers and children, and to deter asylum-seekers from even attempting to come here. And this is in spite of both domestic and international laws governing the rights of refugees. Apparently, those laws are no longer operative in the United States.

Trump always said, "I will be very tough on families," but I think everyone assumed he just meant that to apply to families of suspected terrorists -- not that that makes such a policy any less grotesque and immoral. It appears that he meant it as a broad-based deterrent to be used against all people he sees as enemies of the state. He now has administrators, prosecutors and an armed force eager to carry it out.

America's borders have officially become a cruel, dystopian nightmare for immigrants and refugees. The president and his supporters couldn't be happier.

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/06/trump-and-sessions-border-policy-is-a-nightmare-and-that-was-the-idea-all-along/

I wonder. When will Americans try entering another country illegally to escape the "terrorist regime" in the WH? When will they become émigrés seeking political asylum? Canada has already had that to a certain degree when those who feared being round up and deported sought refuge here. A possibility if Trump et al keep on their downward spiral.

I was thinking the very same thing this morning - something I once would not have believed even imaginable.

I still have a lot of articles on this horrific policy "saved to read/maybe post later" that I can't make myself read yet ~ but this one focuses on the cruel/inhumane mindset of the DiC ~ ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Trump sees immigrant children as bargaining chips in political fight
06/18/18 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen

For weeks, Donald Trump’s official line has been that his administration has no choice but to break up immigrant families and separate children from their parents. According to the president, this is only happening because of a Democratic law – a claim he’s repeated constantly, refusing to accept responsibility for his own policy.

This is, of course, as ugly a lie as Trump has told since taking office. The law the president points to does not exist. As many administration officials have already conceded, the policy was part of a deliberate choice on the part of the president, who could reverse course at any time. Some in the White House have even bragged about it.

Indeed, the New York Times had an excellent piece over the weekend documenting how the president and his team decided to pull the trigger in recent months.


We know when the president did this, we know why, and we know how. We even know who was helping drive the decision behind the scenes. Trump may be desperate to shift the blame for his policy to those who have nothing to do with it, but top members of his team have openly acknowledged that this was, and is, the White House’s idea.

Trump’s lying, however, is only a small part of the problem. It’s more important to appreciate the fact that his policy isn’t just cruelty for cruelty’s sake: the president apparently has a strategy in mind.


An Axios report added this morning that the president views the family-separation issue “as leverage, and will try to get funding for a border wall or other concessions for a rollback of the policy.”

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 6/15/18, 9:38 PM ET, "Children begin arriving at Trump's 'tent city' camp in Texas", accessible via the end link.]

In other words, decent people everywhere see 2,000 children separated from their families as an unnecessary and dangerous tragedy. Donald Trump looks at those same kids and sees a bargaining chip to be used at the negotiating table.

The Washington Post’s report quoted a White House official saying, “The president has told folks that in lieu of the laws being fixed, he wants to use the enforcement mechanisms that we have. The thinking in the building is to force people to the table.”

The article added that Trump hopes to “gain advantage from a practice the American Academy of Pediatrics describes as causing children ‘irreparable harm.’”

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because we’ve seen a related version of this before. Trump originally thought he could get his way on immigration by using Dreamers as a bargaining chip – basically telling congressional Democrats that he’d put these young immigrants’ future in jeopardy unless Dems met his demands. The courts, however, took the White House’s leverage away.

And so, Trump has effectively swapped one hostage for another. Unable to threaten one group of young immigrants, the Republican is now threatening another.

This is a presidency sorely in need of, among other things, a moral compass.

Postscript: Even after all of these details came to public light, Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Meet the Press” yesterday and told NBC News’ Chuck Todd that Congress “has to act” in order to end the family-separation policy. Referring to lawmakers, Conway added, “If they don’t like that law, they should change it.”

As everyone involved in this fight already knows, there is no law. Trump created this mess and has the authority to end this nightmare at any time. Whether Conway expects anyone to believe her transparent falsehoods is something of a mystery.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-sees-immigrant-children-bargaining-chips-political-fight#break

And yet - there are those who spin and try to justify this. I saw a post on a friend's page with a video explaining how this is all not an atrocity by blaming it on Obama and his administration with totally faulty logic. The thing that got to me more than the lying spin - was the poster who believed it. He is not just some right-wing nut - or so I thought. That scares me even more. People once considered decent have lost all sense of empathy and critical reasoning for political power and gain.

There seems to be an anger that has been brewing in the U.S. and perhaps across the world.

It's an anger that Trump tapped into to win the presidency. It's an anger directed not at problems and situations but at people. It is sometimes blatantly racist, but other times less so. It is rationalized and gives reason to support horrible actions. It has supported unjustified wars, torture, and now the treatment of people seeking safety as criminals.

It is fueled by fear and ignorance, a dangerous combination.

There was a time in Germany where families were separated.
Later, the people said they either didn't know or were just following orders.

It amazed me also how so many just stay silent - even the ones that oppose seem afraid to speak out. I never understood how Germans let Hitler take over so completely - now I understand. The "I didn't know" rang hollow then and still does, and will in the years to come if trump gets his way. Seems there are more sheep willing to follow their shepherds to the slaughter than I would have imagined in this day and age where facts and history are so readily available to learn from.

This is true, John, but how to stop it eludes me. Today right-wing conservatives seem more a cult (not much different than how Scientology indoctrinates their members to dismiss facts and logic) - brain-washed to the core. You can kidnap a cult member and stage an intervention, but what about large sections of the population? How to turn them around to reason and critical thinking is beyond me and scary, because unless it hits them in a disastrous sense, they will not budge; meanwhile we might all have to pay for their ignorance. What is there to do?

"Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it" jumps into my mind ~ I'm having a significant problem with this "policy", and the mountain of lies being spewed to try and pawn it off on the Ds ~ personally, I don't see this as a R/D divide ~ I see it as a subhuman/human divide, being orchestrated by a subhuman ~

Sooz

queenoftheuniverse wrote:

I cannot believe what my country has become and why more people are not outraged or horrified about what is being done in our name.

Queenie, your country began its descent in 2001 when it allowed a single terrorist attack to create such monsters as The Patriot Act, acceptance of torture, Guantanamo and the deliberate effort to ignore human rights that it represents, dark sites, extra judicial killings in foreign lands and "collateral damage" as an acceptable, even admirable, consequence of "keeping America safe." That, as a simple political ploy, it separates children from parents and locks them in cages is simply a continuation of America's descent into a moral morass of tyranny and despotism.

jim, I get what you're saying ~ and, to a degree, I agree the US went too far in freaking out ~

BUT ... that "single terrorist attack" killed 3,000 people, took down several buildings in NYC, and totally changed the lives of almost too many to count ~ please do not diminish that evil act ~

Sooz

I'm still seesawing between rabid anger and heartbreak on this issue ~ but this commentary from Bruce deserves to be seen/read by everyone ~ it is definitely "a whole new level of evil" ~ ~ Sooz

Jim, my country began its descent long before 2001 and has committed horrific acts at many points in history. Almost nothing you point out began in 2001- we did it to Japanese Americans in World War 2, we inflicted horrors in Indochina from the mid fifties to the mid seventies. We had slaves and fought our own people over it. The native people did not just give the country to the Europeans or sell it to the real estate developers, I am sure.

However, there have always been people that had the power to speak up, bounce back, redirect.We have overcome many of these past "policies" and I am sure we will overcome this one too. It is extremely disheartening to watch people like Kirsten Nielsen and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lie and defend things they don't believe in. It is horrific listening to Jeff Sessions and white evangelicals quote the bible as reasons why this is ok. Our abuses used to be our dirty little secrets. Now they are public policy and what god wants us to. Sad.

BUT ... that "single terrorist attack" killed 3,000 people, took down several buildings in NYC, and totally changed the lives of almost too many to count ~ please do not diminish that evil act ~


….and how many hundreds of thousands Iraqis and Afghanis have Americans killed in retaliation......99.999999999% of whom had absolutely nothing to do 9/11? You insistence nobody diminish 9/11 serves only to shove the Iraqi and Afghan atrocities under the table. Other countries have suffered horrendous terrorist attacks as well but none responded against innocents the way America has.

queenoftheuniverse wrote:

Jim, my country began its descent long before 2001 and has committed horrific acts at many points in history. Almost nothing you point out began in 2001- we did it to Japanese Americans in World War 2, we inflicted horrors in Indochina from the mid fifties to the mid seventies. We had slaves and fought our own people over it. The native people did not just give the country to the Europeans or sell it to the real estate developers, I am sure.

However, there have always been people that had the power to speak up, bounce back, redirect.We have overcome many of these past "policies" and I am sure we will overcome this one too. It is extremely disheartening to watch people like Kirsten Nielsen and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lie and defend things they don't believe in. It is horrific listening to Jeff Sessions and white evangelicals quote the bible as reasons why this is ok. Our abuses used to be our dirty little secrets. Now they are public policy and what god wants us to. Sad.

I disagree, Queenie. Certainly America, like all countries, has done some terrible in the past but they have been isolated instances and, like you said, the country found it's way to overcome those and get back on the right track. After 9/11, though, for the first time the U.S. embarked on a systemic program of escalating assaults on freedom and decency. Thus far they have brought us to the such abominations as the Freedom Caucus and Grabem. Have you ever considered what is next because these people are on the ascent not the decline.

Opportunity for a major correction in less than 4 months. So far, all I've seen is Dems hoping Trump destroys the Repugs rather than getting out there and hitting the ground running. Miss this one and, IMO, Murrica is well and truly fooked for at least a decade.

jim, I already said "I get what you're saying ~ and, to a degree, I agree the US went too far in freaking out ~" ~ what you seem to be forgetting is that 9/11 was ONE of those atrocities, jim ~ and it was very personal for me [as I've posted before] ~

Sooz